


if you don't slip and tumble, someone will

by defcontwo



Series: you go, batgirl [4]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Red Robin (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-31
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-19 02:56:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15500772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/pseuds/defcontwo
Summary: On the screen, Kirk and Spock are sharing a tearful farewell through a thick pane of glass.Cass falls off the couch and onto the floor, rolling over and pressing her face into the carpet.(a collection of short tim and cass drabbles)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> drabble off a prompt for "tim and cass watching movies and cass bursting into laughter at the most inappropriate points because she can tell what the actors are really thinking" 
> 
> yes this was written in 2015 and i just found it again on my tumblr, which is less embarrassing than that fic i found that i forgot about from 2013. right??? right. i swear, i think i was in some sort of tim drake fugue state for most of 2012-2015.

Tim doesn’t have a whole lotta opinions about that many movies one way or the other, really. 

There are a few things that his life allows the time for outside of work and college and full-time vigilantism; things like microwave ramen and too many Red Bull can towers tottering in the corner of his kitchen and furious attempts at beating Dick and Jason at Words with Friends (Jason always wins, the fucker), but he just doesn’t get around to watching that many movies. TV is even worse. Every time he tells himself he’s gonna watch a show as it starts, before he knows it, he looks up and five seasons have passed and — well. Whatever. He’s just installed a Word of the Day app on his phone, so Jason can suck it.

Mostly, he has a lifetime’s worth of secondhand movie opinions from Ives, alongside with a whole host of probably mostly useless trivia facts that Ives made sure to drill into his head like an old man imparting wisdom on his deathbed, back when Ives was rail thin and pale and dying and they spent days on end huddled on Ives’s bed smoking weed and re-watching Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan.

Ives is alive, still, whole and healthy and strong after so many fucking shitty near-misses and in a weird sort of way, they both silently acknowledge that maybe Wrath of Khan is what got them through it, in the end.

So, if there’s one movie that Tim does not fuck around with, it’s that.

Which is why he’s maybe also currently contemplating fratricide.

“Will you stop it,” Tim says, picking up a pillow and throwing it at Cass halfheartedly and even now, three beers in and all but stuffing her fist in her mouth to keep in the laughter, she still manages to duck it perfectly.

On the screen, Kirk and Spock are sharing a tearful farewell through a thick pane of glass.

Cass falls off the couch and onto the floor, rolling over and pressing her face into the carpet.

"I don’t want to know, do I,” Tim says, mostly to the ceiling.

Cass turns over, reaching up a hand to punch him lightly in the leg. “No. You’d appreciate this, I think. It’s not what they’re thinking that’s funny…it’s just. Ives’s face will be when you tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

Cass leans up and tugs Tim down to whisper her answer into his ear because if there’s one thing that they all share, it’s a flair for the theatrics.

Tim laughs so hard that he loses his balance, sliding right off the couch, falling into Cass with a thud as she turns around and pokes him hard in the gut, right where he’s most ticklish.

She’s right.

Ives’s face will be hilarious.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tim and cass at the dog park. 
> 
> because they're good dogs, bruce. 
> 
> (also from my tumblr circa 2015)

It’s not – it’s not been a very good week, in the end. Monday was her – Monday was David Cain’s birthday, a day that she hates that she knows by heart; she hates that she woke up that morning and looked at her bedside clock and still, after everything, her first thought was of him.

It has been years and years since she saw him last. If she saw him today, Cass thinks that she really might kill him. Might reach into his chest and tear out his heart and leave it gasping on hard concrete floor, proof positive that he has one, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Tuesday was a child that she could not save, Tuesday was a scream lodged in the back of her throat and blood stuck to her gauntlets that got washed out with water and Alfred’s industrial strength soap and tears.

Wednesday, Garfield Lynns uses her favorite ballet studio as so much kindle and flame, canceling classes indefinitely until the owner can figure out what to do next. A handsome endowment from the Wayne Foundation will help, she knows, but that will still take time and there is an itch just beneath Cass’s skin that only dancing will ease and still and anyways, she will miss that building, she had gotten used to it, to the smell of the studio, to the feel of the wooden barre beneath her calloused hands. It wasn’t a home but it felt like one nonetheless.

It is Saturday and there is a message on her phone from Brenda saying that she’s sorry, saying that it’s gotten too hard trying to stay here, saying that she’s gonna be on the next plane to Star City to live with her cousin, saying that she wishes she could say goodbye but sometimes, all you can do is just keep walking forward. Her words leave an ache in Cass’s chest, like something’s been carved out of her.

Jason gave her an Edgar Allen Poe audiobook collection for her birthday. She thinks maybe listening to it has made her a little too maudlin for her own good.

Cass flops backwards in bed and throws an arm over her face, phone dropping to her chest. She lies there for another thirty minutes before her phone starts to ring.

She’d ignore it, but.

She only uses this ringtone for one person.

Cass thumbs open the phone, answering the call. She doesn’t feel like talking, can’t make the words form in the back of her throat, not after the week she’s had, so she lets her silence speak for her.

“Meet me at 5th and L in 20 minutes.”

Cass huffs into the phone and she can almost picture the look on Tim’s face, that look that is equal parts exasperated and fond.

“There’s a London Fog and a breakfast burrito in it for you.”

Cass smiles, in spite of herself. “Okay,” she says, and then hangs up.

Twenty-five minutes later, Cass is drawing her favorite bright yellow hoodie close into herself and trudging towards a park bench, her brother’s messy bun and favorite bright orange Gotham Knights t-shirt setting him apart.

In front of Tim, there are at least twenty different dogs running around and careening into each other, almost entirely ignoring their owners’ commands in favor of every new sight, sound and smell in the park.

Cass sits down on the bench and Tim drops a breakfast burrito in her lap. There’s a to-go cup on the ground that she assumes is her London Fog. Cass quietly tears open the aluminum foil and unwraps the burrito, taking a bite. Extra jalapenos, her favorite.

In Tim’s lap, there’s an already half-eaten congealed mess of guacamole and tortilla because Tim likes his burritos to stretch the realities of burrito physics. There is, she realizes, a huge streak of sour cream and grease streaming directly into his lap that Tim is completely ignoring in favor of leaning down to make friends with a wide-eyed, excitable chihuahua that wandered over and raised its paws onto his legs.

The chihuahua loses interest in Tim quickly, though, and wiggles over to her and she holds a hand out patiently, letting the dog decide for itself. It’s always an easy thing with dogs. They get it in a way that a lot of people don’t.

It’s all in the body language.

The chihuahua wiggles back and forth a couple of times before making up its mind, crawling forward and nosing against Cass’s legs, so she leans a hand down to scratch behind its ears. Happiness warms Cass up from the inside, bright and unfettered, and it’s such a simple thing, but it goes a long, long way. Tim just sits there quietly, leaning into her side a little, nothing but a solid, reassuring presence.

She doesn’t say thank you but she doesn’t have to. He hears it anyways.


End file.
